The last CEP survey was decided in knowledge and evaluation of public figures. And to the surprise of many, former President Michelle Bachelet is the only one, today, with any chance of ruining the number one plan of the current piñerist administration, which is to pass yes or yes the presidential band to one of their own. Because, beyond some individual intentions of various figures of the former New Majority, reality shocks them head-on and no one generates greater interest in public opinion, since whoever appears after the ex-Mandataria is the former presidential candidate Alejandro Guillier, in tenth place.
A pauperious panorama for the former center-left bloc, because, beyond the wounds that remained open after having delivered for the second time La Moneda on the right and to Sebastián Piñera, for better and worse the figures of the CEP brought back the ghost of Bach elet. It has even been said that in its narrower environment some would already be raising the possibility of returning, arguing the need to defend the “legacy” of their government, the reforms, which the right-wing administration has tried to dismantle. The idea does not like and unsettles greatly in the middle left, because it gives an account of the disastrous political scenario they live in.
Without political proposals and without figures capable of bringing the sector together to try to survive and rise, there are few lights that mark the way to the once New Majority. With a Christian Democracy that seeks to demarcate itself from the left axis and which has deepened the demands of its peers to such an extent that, for many, it is unfeasible to project a healthy coexistence, in addition to the crisis of the Socialist Party, in that, after its elections domestic and accusations of narcorredes, an internal civil war broke out with incalculable damages, the industry’s forecasts become unencouraging.
The last of the lifeguards and which looms as the turning point between conviction or “bending the bun”, are next year’s municipal elections, but if they record a significant defeat of the centre-left – as some already predict – would be the sentence final for any attempt by this sector to compete right in the presidential election.
The inability to renew presented by the center-left is a subject that runs through the corridors daily and, noting that the figures refloat the ghost of Bachelet, for now they answer with a sharp “no possibility”. A reaction that responds to the fact that the figure of the ex-Mandataria and her Government are still seen as a factor of disunity and guilty of the current state of decomposition experienced by the opposition.
A wound that has not closed and that goes through from the PS to the DC, as the former still remember the distance with which they were treated despite being their party, and the latter, brought afloat what they considered a nomore that led , at the end of the administration, to cool relations with La Moneda. And this is one of the reasons why today – they sentence – “there is not a millimeter of water in the pool” for her.
On the PS they assured that, of the hundred percent of bacheletists that existed, there would be more than a third of them today and that exemplified in the lack of working structure in defense of what was once called his legacy. “There are no hosts united around their legacy,” they said at the collective, where they added that there is not even a text to stick to. Those who once thought of the way as squats of the work done, are almost not heard these days.
Another obstacle that the former head of state would encounter on the PS is that of the current boss, Alvaro Elizalde, who on the day of the cabinet change, during the second bacheletist administration, was notified minutes earlier, a decision that he did not see coming and that left him quite beaten, and added to that, that his replacement was his eternal rival, Marcelo Diaz. Elizalde’s departure took place in the context of the landing of the center thesis that brought Jorge Burgos to reinstate the forces of the old Concertación. Decisions like that, they argued, are the ones that have taken her further away from her own.
Members of her ex-cabinet joined the questioning, noting that “no one likes the idea and she has dismissed it outright.” They argued that the Bachelet “crossed a roof” and that abroad I can do “much more than in the country.” They also noted that the only way it would be brought back to the ballot would be as the “all opposition” candidate and could never be exposed to a presidential primary. “It would have to be a total consensus,” a former minister said.
For the director of the Center for Political Analysis at the University of Talca, Mauricio Morales, the center-left test “that he is seriously thinking about the future, is to abandon all possibility of thinking of Bachelet as a presidential candidate. If the centre-left refuses that reality, which is a figure of the past and not of the future, what is going to occur is an even greater crisis than we are seeing today.”
Without closing doors
While there are few who, transversely and confident in their words, permanently closed the door to an eventual return of Bachelet 3.0, there is a small group that, as a counterpoint, has a reflection: “No one is so great at this time as to close doors girls. If available, it should be considered.”
This debate has not officially taken place in the middle of the left, let alone the seriousness it perhaps requires, but there is a circle of persons of great influence from the once New Majority who believes that, given the reality thrown out of the numbers Michelle Bachelet should “be more categorical” about her determination never to run again for the Presidency of the Republic, in order to end the assumptions. An impractical scenario, since, first of all, because of her office, the former head of state cannot speak out in relation to contingent local policy and, secondly, because– as they claimed, as long as this Government “continues to campaign,” to think about forgetting Ex-Mandataria became a utopia.
For Morales, if she is running 2021 as a candidate, she will most likely end up much like Eduardo Frei in 2009, meaning, “as an ex-president defeated widely at the polls. One of the reasons, for exhausted leadership, because there is an immediate memory that is not good and, finally, it will be almost impossible for him to get dc support.” With that scenario, he added that Bachelet would also have to face “a left-wing candidacy, emanating from the Broad Front.”
One of the biggest voids left by the former ruler and passed on to her to this day is the breaking of myth. Caval’s conflict took her off the pedestal, broke with this imaginary of “the mother of Chile”, emphasized a former adviser to his government. And against that, hard to fight.
The director of the UDP Advertising School, Cristián Leporati, said that “in both his first government and the second, he mortgaged his image, his credibility and a vote. The opinion asset he had, pleasant, close, friendly, no longer has it, although he maintains his personality attributes. And even if I did, it’s no longer relevant to people, because the amount of liabilities they have, in terms of actions or omissions, make it, as a political project, unworkable.”
